Lean were the hounds, high-bred, and sharp for wode blood;

And foremost in the press Gualandi rode,

Lanfranchi, and Sismondi.58 Soon were seen The father and his sons, those wolves I mean, Limping, and by the hounds all crush'd and torn : And as the cry awoke me in the morn,

I heard my children, while they dozed in bed
(For they were with me), wail, and ask for bread.
Full cruel, if it move thee not, thou art,

To think what thoughts then rush'd into my heart.
What wouldst thou weep at, weeping not at this?-
All had now waked, and something seem'd amiss,
For 'twas the time they used to bring us bread.
And from our dreams had grown a horrid dread.
I listen'd; and a key, down stairs, I heard
Lock up the dreadful turret. Not a word
I spoke, but look'd my children in the face:
No tear I shed, so firmly did I brace
My soul; but they did; and my Anselm said,
'Father, you look so!-Wont they bring us bread?'
E'en then I wept not, nor did answer word
All day, nor the next night. And now was stirr'd,
Upon the world without, another day;

And of its light there came a little ray,
Which mingled with the gloom of our sad jail;
And looking to my children's bed, full pale,
In four small faces mine own face I saw.
Oh, then both hands for misery did I gnaw;
And they, thinking I did it, being mad

6

For food, said, Father, we should be less sad
If you would feed on us. Children, they say,
Are their own father's flesh. Starve not to-day.'
Thenceforth they saw me shake not, hand nor foot.
That day, and next, we all continued mute.
O thou hard Earth! why opened'st thou not?-
Next day (it was the fourth in our sad lot)
My Gaddo stretch'd him at my feet, and cried,
'Dear father, wont you help me?' and he died.

And surely as thou seest me here undone,
I saw my whole four children, one by one,
Between the fifth day and the sixth, all die.
I became blind; and in my misery

Went groping for them, as I knelt and crawl'd
About the room; and for three days I call'd
Upon their names, as though they could speak too,
Till famine did what grief had fail'd to do."

Having spoke thus, he seiz'd with fiery eyes
That wretch again, his feast and sacrifice,
And fasten'd on the skull, over a groan,
With teeth as strong as mastiff's on a bone.

Ah, Pisa! thou that shame and scandal be
To the sweet land that speaks the tongue of Sì,59
Since Florence spareth thy vile neck the yoke,
Would that the very isles would rise, and choke
Thy river, and drown every soul within
Thy loathsome walls. What if this Ugolin
Did play the traitor, and give up (for so
The rumour runs) thy castles to the foe,
Thou hadst no right to put to rack like this
His children. Childhood innocency is.

But that same innocence, and that man's name, Have damn'd thee, Pisa, to a Theban fame.60

This most affecting of all Dante's stories has been told beautifully (as I have remarked elsewhere) by Chaucer; "but he had not the heart to finish it." He refers for the conclusion to his original, the "grete poete of Itaille;' adding, that Dante will not fail his readers a single word— that is to say, not an atom of the cruelty.

Our great gentle-hearted countryman, who tells Fortune that it was

adds a touch of pathos in the behaviour of one of the children, which Dante does not seem to have thought of:

PETRARCH'S CONTEMPLATIONS OF DEATH. 227

"There, day by day, this child began to cry,
Till in his father's barme (lap) adown he lay;
And said, 'Farewell, father, I muste die,'

And kissed his father, and died the same day.”

Appendix to the Author's "Stories from the "Italian Poets," (in prose,) vol. i. p. 407.

It will be a relief perhaps, to the reader, and would have been a comfort to Chaucer to know, what history has since discovered,-namely, that the story of Ugolino is very doubtful.

PETRARCH'S CONTEMPLATIONS OF

DEATH

IN THE BOWER OF LAURA.

CLEAR, fresh, and dulcet streams,
Which the fair shape who seems

To me sole woman, haunted at noontide;
Fair bough, so gently fit,

(I sigh to think of it,)

Which lent a pillar to her lovely side;

And turf, and flowers bright-eyed,

O'er which her folded gown

Flow'd like an angel's down;

And you, O holy air and hush'd,

Where first my heart at her sweet glances gush'd;

Give ear, give ear with one consenting,

To my last words, my last, and my lamenting.

If 'tis my fate below,

And heaven will have it so,

That love must close these dying eyes in tears,

May my poor dust be laid

In middle of your shade,

While my soul naked mounts to its own spheres. The thought would calm my fears,

228 PETRARCH'S CONTEMPLATIONS OF DEATH.

When taking, out of breath,
The doubtful step of death;
For never could my spirit find

A stiller port after the stormy wind;
Nor in more calm, abstracted bourne,

Slip from my travaill'd flesh, and from my bones outworn.

Perhaps, some future hour,
To her accustomed bower

Might come the untamed, and yet the gentle she;
And where she saw me first,

Might turn with eyes athirst

And kinder joy to look again for me;

Then, oh the charity!

Seeing amidst the stones

The earth that held my bones,

A sigh for very love at last

Might ask of Heaven to pardon me the past:
And Heaven itself could not say nay,

As with her gentle veil she wiped the tears away.

How well I call to mind,

When from those boughs the wind

Shook down upon her bosom flower on flower;
And there she sat, meek-eyed,

In midst of all that pride,

Sprinkled and blushing through an amorous

shower.

Some to her hair paid dower,

And seem'd to dress the curls

Queenlike, with gold and pearls ;

Some, snowing, on her drapery stopp'd,

Some on the earth, some on the water dropp'd;

While others, fluttering from above,

Seem'd wheeling round in pomp, and saying, " Here reigns Love,"

How often then I said,

Inward, and fill'd with dread,

"Doubtless this creature came from paradise!" For at her look the while,

Her voice, and her sweet smile,

And heavenly air, truth parted from mine eyes;
So that, with long-drawn sighs,

I said, as far from men,

"How came I here, and when!"
I had forgotten; and alas!

Fancied myself in heaven, not where I was;
And from that time till this, I bear

Such love for the green bower, I cannot rest elsewhere..

FRIENDS AND FOES.

FROM ARIOSTO.

ARIOSTO does not write in the intense manner of Dante. He was a poet of other times and opinions; much inferior to Dante, yet still a great poet of his kind, true to nature, more universal in his sympathies, giving wonderful verisimilitude to the wildest fictions, and full of a charming ease as well as force, though enjoyment sometimes makes him diffuse, and even a little weak and languid. This defect is not unobservable in the episodes before us, as far as style is concerned; though otherwise, and often in the style also, they are full of spirit of the most various kind, both grave and gay.

The episode of Medoro and Cloridano, (the Friends here so mixed up with Foes,) is a variation of that of Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, with beautiful additions. It is a story of friendship and gratitude, and shows the poet's hearty belief in those virtues. The episode of Angelica and Medoro, into which it runs, is a story of love, or rather of girlish passion, and equally shows his truth to the less sentimental impulses of nature, especially where he contrasts his heroine's dotage on the boy with her previous indifference to lovers of a grander sort, who doted on herself. But coquet and mere girl as she was, albeit a queen, this simple reference to a fact in the history and constitution of human nature, has rendered her marriage with the